Battle of Sehested 10th December 1813

Battle of Sehested

10th December 1813

by Colin Allen

BACKGROUND

The Danish army is one of the "Cinderellas" of the Napoleonic Wars. Their contribution is little known, especially their service around Hamburg in late 1813. Hopefully this article will go some way to altering this state of affairs.

Denmark first became involved in the wars after the British attempt to impound the Danish fleet in 1807. Until this time the Danes had favoured an alliance with Britain, but they resisted gallantly, if hopelessly. The Crown Prince Frederik refused to accept an imposed alliance with Britain but was forced to surrender and the Danish fleet was captured. These events drove the Danes into Napoleon's welcoming arms. The old King, Christian VII, died in 1808 and the Crown Prince succeeded as Frederik VI.

He managed to keep his army out of harm's way until 1812 when the Emperor, looking round for extra troops to add to the Grand Armee prior to the attack on Russia, requested that a Danish contingent be mobilised. Somehow Frederik managed to persuade Napoleon that Denmark could best help by providing a contingent, known as the "Mobile Army Division", for rear area security duties in the Duchy of Holstein.

After the debacle of Russia, Denmark declared its neutrality in the spring of 1813; the country was bankrupt and desperate to return to a peace time economy. There was, however, one major obstacle in the path of this laudable intention - the Danish held territory of Norway. Sweden had long had its eye on this particular piece of land and, under Crown Prince Bernadotte, was determined to take it. Denmark's main defence had always been its alliance with Russia, a country which had good reason to fear a resurgence of Swedish expansionism, but which was now allied to her and had agreed to back her claims on Norway.

Frederik attempted to negotiate with Russia, Austria and Britain but eventually came to the conclusion that he would have to fight to hold on to his Norwegian territory. Consequently, on May 16th 1813, he declared for Napoleon and undertook to provide a small corps of 11000 infantry, 2100 cavalry and 40 guns, made up of the units of the "Mobile Army Division" and some reinforcements, under the command of the King's brother in law, Prince Frederik of Hessen.

This formation was sent to join Marshal Davout's 13th Corps in Northern Germany and was designated the "Auxiliary Corps". In the autumn campaign the Danes fought with some distinction against Walmoden's polyglot army. When the news of Leipzig reached him, Davout retreated back into Hamburg to begin his epic defence of that city, not surrendering until after Napoleon's abdication. The Danes, however, were ordered to fall back to defend Holstein.

The retreating column, including a convoy of some 500 wagons, was on the march to Rendsborg on December 10th, on a road which passed through the bottleneck of Sehested, when an enemy force was discovered in the village of Holzsee.

THE DANISH ARMY

The Danish army of 1813, which had been almost totally raw at the beginning of the campaign and, as contemporary letters show, shocked by its first taste of war and the French method of living off the land, had matured into an efficient fighting force, helped by the fact that its troops were drilled to a far higher standard than most of the conscript armies of that year. Morale had improved massively since the summer, when there had been problems due to the large numbers of personnel of German descent and, hence, pro German sentiment in the corps. However, Frederik of Hessen had proved to be an excellent leader of men and the problems had now been overcome.

The Danish tactical system was based on the French but the high level of training allowed a flexibility that was unknown in the French army of the period.

The infantry could attack in lines, columns or a swarm of skirmishers. The attack column was formed one company wide and four or five companies deep with a screen formed by a musketeer company if it was the first battalion or the Jaeger company in one of the other battalions. When attacking in a skirmisher swarm attention was paid to closely supporting the open order troops with a formed unit. It would seem, however, that the musketeers, although theoretically capable of fighting in skirmish order, were not particularly adept at it. In defence the Danish infantry fought in line, delivering battalion or platoon volleys.

The cavalry was, for 1813, of superb quality despite initial problems with the Funen Light Dragoons, which were solved by weeding out several of the less competent officers. The artillery was the weak point of the corps, consisting of a mixture of French 6 pounders and Danish 3 pounders, the latter being heavy and unwieldy pieces. The batteries were, in theory, of ten guns but most were now down to eight. Although the artillery generally performed creditably it was not capable of forming "Grand Batteries" in the French manner. So much for the Danes, let us now take a look at the troops who were to oppose them in this small but hard fought action.

WALMODEN'S CORPS

Walmoden's corps was part of Bernadotte's Army of the North and, in many ways, reflected the new idea of German nationalism which had arisen during the years of French domination.

Its troops came from many different states, some of which had only recently turned against their former master, Napoleon. The best troops were probably those of the Russo-German Legion, formed by the Russians from German prisoners of war and deserters from the Grand Armee.

The few KGL men present were also of a high standard but, unfortunately, their main contribution to the corps, the 3rd Hussar regiment, was absent on the day of battle. Hanoverian troops made up a fairly large part of the force but were generally rather raw and poorly trained.

The Mecklenburgers had only recently come over to the Allied side, as had the Anhalt-Dessau contingent, but at least they contained a hard core of men who had seen extensive service under the French.

ORDERS OF BATTLE
DANISH FORCE

Prince Frederik of Hessen

ADVANCED GUARD: General de Division Lallemand

MAIN BODY:

2nd Brigade: Oberst von Abercron

THE CONVOY

c.500 Wagons

1st Battalion Queen's Infantry Regiment
2 Companies 2nd Battalion Oldenburg Infantry Regiment
Funen Dragoon Regiment (1 squadron)
All this adding up to about 9000 men.

WALMODEN'S CORPS

Count Walmoden

ARENTSCHILDT'S DIVISION

2nd Brigade:????????

LYON'S DIVISION

FROM VEGESACK'S DIVISION

Mecklenburg Foot Jaegers (375)

Cavalry Brigade: ?????????

ARTILLERY

DORNBERG'S DIVISION

The Battle of Sehested

Back to Table of Contents -- First Empire #5
Back to First Empire List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1992 by First Empire.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com